Squeezing for memage
Feb. 19th, 2005 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonAll right, I decided to stop sitting here like a quivering lump of blancmange and come up with Ten Things I've Done That Others Might Not Have. Once I squeezed the brain a few times like a wet sponge, a few drops came out.
Prepare to snooze.
1. I rode in a gondola at nine o'clock at night through the canals of Venice, Italy and in the Grand Canal because the guy I was with thought "they ripped you off earlier in the day or evening." It was definitely not romantic in the pitch dark with rats scurrying along the not-so-far-away edges of canal and those dark looming buildings and the brackish water lap-lap-lapping against them. And riding in a tiny boat in a very large Grand Canal (open water) with big boats all around in pitch black dark is not something I recommend, either.
2. I drove around the West Country of England on my own for eight days, nothing booked in advance, just finding rooms as I arrived in a city through the Tourist Information or asking around. That was enormous fun. I got to be completely selfish about what I saw and did. No one to discuss it with, though.
3. When I was a kid I saw the original Cinemascope version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Most amazing movie experience ever. Years later when I saw the 70mm version I couldn't figure why it was so disappointing, why the scenes I remember so vividly as looming off the screen at me seemed so flat and dull. Later, when I briefly flirted with film school and heard a lecture on the subject, I understood. (Growing up in L.A., one is almost required to at least flirt with the film industry.)
4. Climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico.
5. Had a long conversation in a book store with Gary Busey about Thomas Jefferson who we both happened to be researching at the time. I wanted to write about him, Gary wanted to play him. I believe Nick Nolte got that part, but I could be mistaken.
6. Worked at the La Brea Tarpits one summer between high school and college in the microfossil lab and cataloging department. Handled real live prehistoric bones. Very fascinating stuff.
7. Met Henry Kissinger. Okay, okay, so I didn't really meet him, but I was in the same room with him. He was wearing some sort of Man Tan, and I could hear him droning on in that voice, and I couldn't keep a straight face. I had to leave the room so as not to embarrass myself.
8. Went to a fancy schmancy benefit Hollywood premiere for a hospital charity (I was invited by my candy striper friends as a guest) for an execrable B movie which I later saw lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Saw many celebrities and wound up sharing a bathroom cubicle with Carol Burnett. No, not at the same time. I was waiting in line and when the cubicle door opened and she looked out, the gob-smacked amazement on my face had her biting her lower lip so as not to laugh.
9. At the age of four or five I was on a horse who got spooked by lightning and broke away from my father, who was leading her. She took off in a blind panic headed for the busy four lane highway near the stables with me hanging on for dear life. Fortunately, my heroic mother managed to jump in front of her, wave her off the from the highway entrance and back towards the stables, and stop her panic. I don't remember being scared. I think maybe I wanted her to do it again.
10. I got to spend the better part of an hour alone in a megalithic burial chamber (West Kennet Long Barrow near Avebury). It was a rainy day and I had to climb a steepish hill through pastures to get to it and there wasn't anybody else around. When I'd finished and was on the way down, a German couple was just coming up. Being up there alone for so long was very mystical; being down in the ground in a stone-lined vault, very navel-of-the-world-like. The endorphins released in the climb up the hill may have had something to do with that, but it was an amazing experience and I felt part of some vast continuum. Since so much of my genetic material comes from the British Isles, I guess that's hardly surprising. It was one of those hinge moments, where you walk into an experience and the world shifts a little and although you're leaving by the same path, you realize it's headed in a slightly different direction. After that trip (the one where I was alone for 8 days) I made big changes in my life, so maybe I did leave that barrow in a slightly different direction.
ZZZZzzzzzzzzz.
Prepare to snooze.
1. I rode in a gondola at nine o'clock at night through the canals of Venice, Italy and in the Grand Canal because the guy I was with thought "they ripped you off earlier in the day or evening." It was definitely not romantic in the pitch dark with rats scurrying along the not-so-far-away edges of canal and those dark looming buildings and the brackish water lap-lap-lapping against them. And riding in a tiny boat in a very large Grand Canal (open water) with big boats all around in pitch black dark is not something I recommend, either.
2. I drove around the West Country of England on my own for eight days, nothing booked in advance, just finding rooms as I arrived in a city through the Tourist Information or asking around. That was enormous fun. I got to be completely selfish about what I saw and did. No one to discuss it with, though.
3. When I was a kid I saw the original Cinemascope version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Most amazing movie experience ever. Years later when I saw the 70mm version I couldn't figure why it was so disappointing, why the scenes I remember so vividly as looming off the screen at me seemed so flat and dull. Later, when I briefly flirted with film school and heard a lecture on the subject, I understood. (Growing up in L.A., one is almost required to at least flirt with the film industry.)
4. Climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico.
5. Had a long conversation in a book store with Gary Busey about Thomas Jefferson who we both happened to be researching at the time. I wanted to write about him, Gary wanted to play him. I believe Nick Nolte got that part, but I could be mistaken.
6. Worked at the La Brea Tarpits one summer between high school and college in the microfossil lab and cataloging department. Handled real live prehistoric bones. Very fascinating stuff.
7. Met Henry Kissinger. Okay, okay, so I didn't really meet him, but I was in the same room with him. He was wearing some sort of Man Tan, and I could hear him droning on in that voice, and I couldn't keep a straight face. I had to leave the room so as not to embarrass myself.
8. Went to a fancy schmancy benefit Hollywood premiere for a hospital charity (I was invited by my candy striper friends as a guest) for an execrable B movie which I later saw lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Saw many celebrities and wound up sharing a bathroom cubicle with Carol Burnett. No, not at the same time. I was waiting in line and when the cubicle door opened and she looked out, the gob-smacked amazement on my face had her biting her lower lip so as not to laugh.
9. At the age of four or five I was on a horse who got spooked by lightning and broke away from my father, who was leading her. She took off in a blind panic headed for the busy four lane highway near the stables with me hanging on for dear life. Fortunately, my heroic mother managed to jump in front of her, wave her off the from the highway entrance and back towards the stables, and stop her panic. I don't remember being scared. I think maybe I wanted her to do it again.
10. I got to spend the better part of an hour alone in a megalithic burial chamber (West Kennet Long Barrow near Avebury). It was a rainy day and I had to climb a steepish hill through pastures to get to it and there wasn't anybody else around. When I'd finished and was on the way down, a German couple was just coming up. Being up there alone for so long was very mystical; being down in the ground in a stone-lined vault, very navel-of-the-world-like. The endorphins released in the climb up the hill may have had something to do with that, but it was an amazing experience and I felt part of some vast continuum. Since so much of my genetic material comes from the British Isles, I guess that's hardly surprising. It was one of those hinge moments, where you walk into an experience and the world shifts a little and although you're leaving by the same path, you realize it's headed in a slightly different direction. After that trip (the one where I was alone for 8 days) I made big changes in my life, so maybe I did leave that barrow in a slightly different direction.
ZZZZzzzzzzzzz.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-19 02:15 pm (UTC)I did go to the cinema dome to see 2001 space odyssey, in 1979 I think it was. (One of the two or three social things I actually did during my entire three years of high school.) It was an amazing experience--but curiously enough I've never wanted to see it again.
Seeing HAIR on stage that same year was more exciting! Ditto JESUS CHRIST, SUPERSTAR.
I also had a close encounter with Carol Burnett. I was carrying a stack of fifty scripts and heading to a door. She was coming through on the other side. She glared at me, clearly expecting me to back up so she could go first, but I couldn't back up with a stack that weighed about as much as I did, so she slammed the door open, knocked me staggering, and marched through to the elevators, trailing yes men.
Not one of either of our finer moments.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-19 02:31 pm (UTC)That was the 70mm version. I saw 2001 at a Cinemascope-equipped theater (the Pantages before they turned it into a stage theater) with the wraparound screens, so it was like seeing the movie in 3D. Incredible.
Nasty! Even being on the fringe of the business in this town, you get plenty of opportunities to "de-iconize" the Celebs. Probably why I have very few icons.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-19 02:32 pm (UTC)Oh, and, WOW.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 02:58 am (UTC)We were on a family holiday by the sea, and one of my aunts (I have lots of aunts) burst out of the caravan to announce that Elvis had just died -- she heard it on the radio.
Everybody rushed to hear the news, leaving the pony I was on to run its merry way onto the road and up the hill. Fortunately, it threw me before we went far.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 07:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 12:39 pm (UTC)You're quite the vagabond. :-)
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Date: 2005-02-20 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-21 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 10:34 pm (UTC)My husband is pretty cheap, remind me to stay away from Venice.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-30 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:04 am (UTC)1. Had a great gondola ride, but I agree that it is a little unnerving to go around at night in the darkness. My favorite part of Venice was the Piazza San Marco – St. Mark’s Square. Especially at night drinking, dancing and romancing. A great place to be. As Napoleon said - it's Europe's drawing room.
2. I drove around Ireland with my childhood friend, Bill. The two of us traveled a circle around the entire country with a map and my decent sense of direction. Not solo, like you, but still adventurous.
3. I still remember being blown away by seeing 2001 as a kid in the movies. I didn’t understand it, but back then I didn’t care. Just experiencing it was enough for me.
4. The closest I got to a pyramid was spending a day in the ruins of the ancient Persian city of Persepolis in Iran. Luckily I had not seen the "Exorcist" yet, or I think I would have been spooked out.
5. I ran into Woody Allen back in the late 1970s in Manhattan. He was very comical in trying to pretend to be someone else. Come on, with a face like that, who was he kidding?!
6. Totally got me beat. The only thing that I did that even comes close was the time that I found some fossils along the side of a road while visiting my Aunt Pauline’s summer house in Upstate NY. I had never been in the country before that, and I still remember being blown away by how dark it was at night.
7. I ran into Richard Nixon while on a break while I was working in the Short Hills Mall in Short Hills, NJ. I immediately walked up to him and said hello. I had him sign the book I was reading at the time, Anna Karenina. He was hanging around while one of his daughters was doing a book signing at a B. Dalton’s store in the same mall. I quickly ran to the mall and bought his daughter’s book and then brought it back to Tricky Dick to sign. I then presented the signed book to my step dad Jim (a big Nixon fan) for his birthday. After Jim passed away, the book was gifted to me.
8. While attending a meeting at Ralph Lauren’s flagship store in NYC, I ran into Carly Simon. She was amazing looking. All legs and smile.
9. At the age of five I got stuck in a tree which I had been climbing. As I grew up an only child, I remained there for about an hour until my step mom noticed I was missing and came out. I had claustrophobia for the next thirty years until I beat finally overcame my fear.
10. I got to visit the megalithic burial chamber Newgrange in Ireland, just north of Dublin. It was so old that I couldn’t even wrap my brain around how old it was. Many years later, I discovered a Native American solstice spot about 40 miles from my home. My friend Roj and I hike to it every year.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 07:50 pm (UTC)2. Ireland! I've always wanted to go and drive around.
3. Yes, it was years before I remotely came to something of a sort of understanding of 2001.
4. Persepolis! Another want. There are many ruined cities in Turkey, Greece, and North Africa I want to see.
5. Ah, Woody.
6. There's a well known fossil site in Topanga Canyon here--an entire loose shale mountain of fossils. I got some seashells there once when I was young and foolish and decided to "wash" them. Which means I wound up with sand. I felt so awful that they'd sat there millions of years only to be reduced to nothing because of my stupidity.
7. Tricky Dick! I'm surprised the Secret Service didn't come after you.
8. All legs and smile, yes.
9. Not claustrophobic, so afraid of heights, so tree-climbing has never been a favorite of mine.
10. Newgrange! Wants! So many places in Ireland to see.